Ukraine war as guide, China will suffer deeply if it invades Taiwan


For decades “strategic ambiguity” has been the U.S. policy towards Taiwan, but recently, President Biden said he would intervene militarily if China invaded the self-ruled island. With Russia’s Ukraine invasion as backdrop, Beijing now has a model in which to compare. Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan breaks down the assumptions China has been operating under for decades and argues that the Ukraine war is proving them all wrong.

Now, a lot of folks were worried just before the Russians moved in, honestly, just in the first couple days of the war as well, that the master plan was that the Russians would go for Ukraine, and the Chinese would go for Taiwan and more or less the same time, and then the United States would just kind of be left, unable to intervene in both.

Now, clearly, things have not broken that way. And I think it’s worth discussing why. Now, the single biggest issue is that the assumptions that the Chinese government has made since the 1950s, when we first have the split between the mainland and Taiwan, has proven to be completely false. Every single assumption that the Chinese have made is wrong.

The first big one was the idea that the war would be quick, that the Russians could provide a template that you can just kind of roll in there and take over a country in no time at all. Well, clearly, that is not how this has gone. And while I still have very huge concerns about the Ukrainians ability to win this war. The point is it take time. And in the case of Taiwan, you’re talking about a country that has been preparing for a mainland invasion for 16 years.

The second big idea is that the Chinese would be able to take over the semiconductor sector within Taiwan and then suddenly leapfrog to become the most powerful semiconductor country in the world. Yeah, that’s just stupid. 

The idea that China could just impose a done deal on the rest of the world and make everyone just suck it up and take it. Yeah, that one’s false too. Not only would be a fight for Taiwan be at least as bad for the Chinese as a fight as the Russian fight for Ukraine.

Everything about the Chinese economic system is based on mass imports, mass exports, tech transfer and foreign markets and without global foreign corporate cooperation with the Chinese economy. There is no Chinese economy. So every single assumption that the Chinese been operated under since the 1950s The Russians have proven false in less than three months.

That may actually be one of the biggest outcomes of this war. China having to go completely back to the drawing board and start completely over, because if they follow the plan as it exists right now, that’s an excellent way to ensure that the Chinese system dies within a year.